Rating: 
Summary: An Unexpected Find
Review: I bought this book in order to get a different perspective on the Afghanistan portrayed in the media. I found this book in the travel section of a local bookstore, quite expecting a clinical look at the country from a potential travelers perspective. Quite the contrary, Jason Elliot's first book is a great piece of work; a fantastic adventure full of humor and humanity. Elliots narration is true and agenda free, and is truly a fascinating look into a storied landscape engulfed in turbulent times.
Rating: 
Summary: As dry as the desert and as difficult to cross
Review: I can see that I am in the minority for disliking this book, but I found it to be a (much) too-long ramble of disconnected thoughts excrutiatingly detailing the author's journeys to Afghanistan. After taking nearly two weeks (!) to slog through a mere 136 pages, I put it down because I simply couldn't stay interested. The writing style struck me as dry and bland, and I could not see that it would improve sufficiently over the remaining 300 pages. I sensed that the author was having trouble determining just what it was that he wanted to write. His experiences didn't come across as particularly rewarding to him nor, even though he was in a war zone, very exciting either. Seeming to realize this, he catches himself a number of times and tries to convince us--and himself, perhaps--that they are both. The people are proud and fierce, every sunrise is the most beautiful he's ever seen, etc. He also follows the predictable route of going "native", wherein it is obligatory to extoll the virtues of living in caves with mujaheddin as being superior to the world from which he came (the same world that enables him to publish his work and that he returns to and lives in). The sole virtue of the "West" is reduced to hot meals and wines, as well as a bed with sheets and pillows. His credibility wanes when he states that, after being in the caves for a period of time, seeing the electric lights of the booming metropolis of Kabul "evoked an animal-like sense of dread." When not testing the reader's patience with long and mundane descriptions of forgettable things, he--as if he realizes he's losing the audience--goes to great lengths to create a little melodrama like this. The point at which I abandoned my effort came when he returned to London and was "appalled by the city's gloomy and unnatural haste, the superabundance and variety of food, and the devastating sight of women in short skirts". Oh come on! He spent some time in Afghanistan, it's not as if he was raised by wolves. The reader is warned early on that this book may be random and tedious when the author admits that he can't determine why he's writing it. The question then looms, as you're reading three pages at a time before continually nodding off, "why am I reading it?" For works of this genre, I find Kaplan to be far more focused, succint, interesting, and rewarding.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable travel book for those interested in Afganistan
Review: I could not put it down until I had read every page. It is a great travel book. The author Jason Elliot shares his daily life, its ups and downs as he travels around the country, walking, hitchhiking sleeping wherever he can lay his head. It is obvious from the start that he has great affection for the Afgan people, their history, culture and country and he shares it all with the reader. He discribes the shambles of the war torn but beautiful country with loving eyes. A remarkable travel book. A must read.
Rating:
Summary: The Real Afghanistan
Review: I finished this book a few days before Sept 11. Seeing a glimpse of the Afghan people through Jason Elliot's eyes, it is hard to believe that the shouting, hate-filled men I see on TV are from the same culture. How sad that these interesting, gracious people, known for their hospitality towards strangers, are whipped into such a frenzy of hate against the American people, many who are known for their compassion, kindnesses and "good-heartedness".
Rating:
Summary: A Timely Masterpiece
Review: I love travel narratives - This one beats them all!
Rating:
Summary: Unparalled description of high adventure
Review: I started reading this book because The Kite Runner got me interested in learning about the crazy-quilt of races, languages and cultures that make up Afghani-land. Elliot has written an unparalleled account of high adventure. This is not a travelogue, it's an account of his travels with Afghan warriors. And his description of them is very informative and sympathetic. The book covers two periods, 1985 in the heat of the fight against the Russians, and 1995 as the Taleban are making their Puritanic onslaught. In the first visit, at age 19, he met a 21 year old Norwegian reserve officer, Pål Refsdal, who was also there to fight (Elliot found that he did not have the stomach for war was guided back to Peshawar over the Khyber Pass after 2 weeks). Refsdal went on to become Norway's most famous war reporter. This is one of the finest travel books available, especially if you love wandering through the mountains and learning about isolated cultures, and even if you don't. As helpful background, Elliot gives us a very interesting short course in Afghan culture and mentality, along with explaining many Dari sentences. There are two irritating things about the book. First, in spite of two maps inside the cover, I was continually running back and forth to a better map of Afghanistan (severe disagreement of various maps with each other is discussed in the book). Second, you have to figure out from the context what the dates are. I finally pinned them down as 1985 and 1995. So you have to do a little homework as you read. I guess that Elliot was brought up on Kipling the way that Americans of an earlier generation were brought up on Hemingway. I know the feeling of freedom from modern society via the backpack and the long mountain trail. The author writes "As to 'Islam', we had, after all, only one substantial objection: its lack of decent wine." Let me state a more serious lack. All fundamentalists, Christian, Islamic, or Jewish, lie mentally not further forward in time than about the fourteenth century, at best (this does not prevent their use of modern weapons and communication). The scientific revolution generally had to overcome Christianity in all its forms in Europe, and led to the end of the witch trials there. Islam did not participate in the Enlightenment (according to Bernard Lewis in "The Middle East", western science (or just "science") was brought into Turkey in the 19th century by a Jew who'd converted to Islam). Where religion dominates, science and other forms of understanding cannot very easily take root. But on a lighter note, lack of wine is certainly a serious matter (as is lack of the mixed, naked sauna so common in the German-speaking countries but absent in England and elsewhere), so perhaps the journalist Peter Scholl-Latour ("Das Schlachtfeld der Zukunft: Zwischen Kaukasus und Pamir") put it best: after visiting with various Mudjahedin groups in Afghanistan during 1980-'95, and experiencing Islamic society more generally in the entire region, he saw a middle-aged French woman in a bikini in Kabul's only swimming pool in 1995 and wrote (pg. 348, my translation) that "the picture of her harmonious body did more to convince me of the absurdity of the oriental habit of covering women that did all the arguments of western feminists combined.' Amen.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best book I have read in years!
Review: I usually read books quite quickly. This is the first book I have read in years that I wanted to savor. I read it once...and then I kept rereading it over and over for months. Simply put, this book is fabulous. Elliot is a gifted writer. Depending on the passage, he is descriptive, humorous, lyrical, profound. This book is incredible. I sent it to every reader I know as a Christmas present. If you are interested in travel, or want to better understand the culture of Afghanistan, or if you simply want to lose yourself in one man's personal journey, then read this book.
You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: I'd have given it no stars, but I can't. Poorly written, with awful spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Elliot romanticizes to an amazing degree, with lines about"Arcadian villages" and so on. He's extremely anti-western, yet incredibly patronizing towards the Afghans. For instance, he chastises one western writer for calling his rural guides "smelly and verminous", but later goes on describe his companions in a hut as "stinking" and we get to hear many times about the lice in his clothes. He never gets out of his own head long enough to truly become a writer, constantly comparing what he sees to other things that have meaning to him, so the average reader never understands what he's seeing. What's a Jaffa cake? Apparently there's a Chinese made mine that looks like one. Add to that his frequent use of words in Persian/Dari/Pashto with no translations, which is incredibly arrogant and annoying. I'm glad this book is out-of-print. It's not worth your time or money
Rating:
Summary: Great travel book on Afghanistan
Review: If you read any travel books this year, I believe this is your best choice. It was written in 1999 when very few people in the developed countries had any interest in the average person's plight in Afghanistan at all. Jason Elliot doesn't seem to have a pre-set agenda or an axe to grind, and I'm guessing that newer books are going to have plenty of both.
I'm a great fan of travel books, and I'm stunned by just how well-written Elliot's first book is. I'd only rank Colin Thurbon above Elliot, and I think Elliot is a bolder traveller.
What really makes this book memorable are the short sections such as the Koran text wroven into his reflections upon his visit to the shrine in Mazar or the Wordsworth quotes at sunset in remote hills. Amidst a great deal of historical and cultural material that doesn't detract from the adventure, Elliot makes the point that Afghanistan has already been destroyed and abandoned, and that the Taleban are but one of many very bad things to happen to the people of Afghanistan. I came away with a much better understanding of the isolated tribal nature of most
of Afghanistan. After reading this book, I've come to the conclusion that bombing this broken land of hardship hardened yet somehow still friendly souls is another mistaken US foreign policy choice. I'll pray for end to their and our suffering, and write a check to the twice bombed Red Cross, even if I am unemployed right now.
Rating:
Summary: Worth doing twice
Review: In our culture we are used to the typical plot structures that pervade our movies, books and plays. If this is what you want, look elsewhere: there is plenty to find your fill. If you seek to wander, as I believe most of us should for the sake of self-realization, this is a great start. The book for me served several purposes & is particularly interesting given current events in this part of the world, as the author intersperses his take on true American interests in Afghanistan as seen through the eyes of some Afghanis. But the kernel of the book is found at the beginning where the author apprises the reader that he is not sure why he is writing the book. The answer is found at the end of this journey where Elliot acknowledges the personal challenge he set for himself:
" . . . was it possible to enlarge the space in oneself where the raw material of experience might sit awhile, before being decanted in the usual way."
In other words, experience for the sake of itself--no agenda, no itinerary, no set bounds. This writer sought an immersive experience of something that was so foreign to him from the standpoint of his own cultural upbringing but nonetheless drew him in resistlessly.
This struck a deep chord for me as it is what travel should be: a journey in the highest spiritual sense. The reader is fortunate to be taken along albeit piecemeal on this quietly epic journey, to paraphrase the author. I recommend this book to those who appreciate the journey as an entity of itself, where every step is a new, potentially life-altering affair. But for those who are more inclined to seek a direct path from point A to point B, you must first strip yourself of these conventional "western" notions. I did & am the better for it.
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